Structural difference between public and private communication in an online community

We investigate an online community where people meet and communicate in
forms of discussions or sending messages to each other. We try to see the big picture of communications and social activities by network analysis. Specifically, in this social network, there are two modes of communications. Either a user can reply to others in a public forum in such a way that we see who comments on whom; or they can send e-mail-like direct messages. In this data we investigate network structures (such as degree-distributions and assortativity), temporal structures such as response-time, interevent-times and activity levels.
Furthermore, we measure combined structures from the different communication channels relating to social-balance theory. Among... (More)

We investigate an online community where people meet and communicate in
forms of discussions or sending messages to each other. We try to see the big picture of communications and social activities by network analysis. Specifically, in this social network, there are two modes of communications. Either a user can reply to others in a public forum in such a way that we see who comments on whom; or they can send e-mail-like direct messages. In this data we investigate network structures (such as degree-distributions and assortativity), temporal structures such as response-time, interevent-times and activity levels.
Furthermore, we measure combined structures from the different communication channels relating to social-balance theory. Among other things, we find that in private communication, people keep feeling obliged to reply over a longer period of time, than in public discussions. We also observe a weak anti-correlation between activity levels in public and private communication respectively, suggesting
that dierent personality types drive the large-scale structural evolution. We relate our findings to theories of social organization and human dynamics. (Less)

@misc{2157138,
abstract = {We investigate an online community where people meet and communicate in
forms of discussions or sending messages to each other. We try to see the big picture of communications and social activities by network analysis. Specifically, in this social network, there are two modes of communications. Either a user can reply to others in a public forum in such a way that we see who comments on whom; or they can send e-mail-like direct messages. In this data we investigate network structures (such as degree-distributions and assortativity), temporal structures such as response-time, interevent-times and activity levels.
Furthermore, we measure combined structures from the different communication channels relating to social-balance theory. Among other things, we find that in private communication, people keep feeling obliged to reply over a longer period of time, than in public discussions. We also observe a weak anti-correlation between activity levels in public and private communication respectively, suggesting
that dierent personality types drive the large-scale structural evolution. We relate our findings to theories of social organization and human dynamics.},
author = {Karimi, Fariba},
language = {eng},
note = {Student Paper},
title = {Structural difference between public and private communication in an online community},
year = {2011},
}